With -mdoc, all input files are
interpreted as mdoc(7). With
-man, all input files are interpreted
as man(7). By default, the
input language is automatically detected for each file: if the first macro
is Dd or
Dt, the
mdoc(7) parser is used;
otherwise, the man(7) parser is
used. With other arguments, -m is
silently ignored.

Specify the minimum message level to be
reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status. The
level can be
base,
style,
warning,
error, or
unsupp. The
base level automatically derives the
operating system from the contents of the
Os macro, from the
-Ios command line option, or from the
uname(3) return value. The
levels openbsd and
netbsd are variants of
base that bypass autodetection and
request validation of base system conventions for a particular operating
system. The level all is an alias for
base. By default,
mandoc is silent. See
EXIT STATUS and
DIAGNOSTICS for details.

The special option -Wstop tells
mandoc to exit after parsing a file
that causes warnings or errors of at least the requested level. No
formatted output will be produced from that file. If both a
level and
stop are requested, they can be joined
with a comma, for example -Werror,stop.

file

Read from the given input file. If multiple files are specified, they are
processed in the given order. If unspecified,
mandoc reads from standard input.

The options -fhklw are also supported and are
documented in man(1). In -f and
-k mode,
mandoc also supports the options
-CMmOSs described in the
apropos(1) manual. The options
-fkl are mutually exclusive and override
each other.

Use -Tascii to force text output in 7-bit ASCII
character encoding documented in the
ascii(7) manual page, ignoring
the locale(1) set in the
environment.

Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an underlined
character ‘c’ is rendered as ‘_\[bs]c’, where
‘\[bs]’ is the back-space character number 8. Emboldened
characters are rendered as ‘c\[bs]c’.

The special characters documented in
mandoc_char(7) are rendered
best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.

The left margin for normal text is set to
indent blank characters instead of the
default of five for mdoc(7)
and seven for man(7).
Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks. When output is to a pager
on a terminal that is less than 66 columns wide, the default is reduced to
three columns.

Format man(7) input files in
mdoc(7) output style.
Specifically, this suppresses the two additional blank lines near the top
and the bottom of each page, and it implies
-Oindent=5. One useful application is for
checking that -Tman output formats in the same way as
the mdoc(7) source it was
generated from.

The output width is set to width instead
of the default of 78. When output is to a pager on a terminal that is less
than 79 columns wide, the default is reduced to one less than the terminal
width. In any case, lines that are output in literal mode are never
wrapped and may exceed the output width.

Output produced by -Thtml conforms to HTML5 using optional
self-closing tags. Default styles use only CSS1. Equations rendered from
eqn(7) blocks use MathML.

The mandoc.css file documents style-sheet
classes available for customising output. If a style-sheet is not specified
with -Ostyle,
-Thtml
defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet) readable in any
graphical or text-based web browser.

Non-ASCII characters are rendered as hexadecimal Unicode character references.

Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>,
and <body> elements and only emit the subtree below the <body>
element. The style argument will be
ignored. This is useful when embedding manual content within existing
documents.

The string fmt, for example,
../src/%I.html, is used as a template for
linked header files (usually via the In
macro). Instances of ‘%I’ are replaced with the include
filename. The default is not to present a hyperlink.

The string fmt, for example,
../html%S/%N.%S.html, is used as a
template for linked manuals (usually via the
Xr macro). Instances of
‘%N’ and ‘%S’ are replaced with the linked
manual's name and section, respectively. If no section is included,
section 1 is assumed. The default is not to present a hyperlink. If two
formats are given and a file %N.%S exists
in the current directory, the first format is used; otherwise, the second
format is used.

By default, mandoc automatically selects
UTF-8 or ASCII output according to the current
locale(1). If any of the
environment variables LC_ALL,
LC_CTYPE, or
LANG are set and the first one that is set
selects the UTF-8 character encoding, it produces
UTF-8 Output; otherwise, it
falls back to ASCII Output.
This output mode can also be selected explicitly with
-Tlocale.

Use -Tman
to translate mdoc(7) input into
man(7) output format. This is
useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems lacking
mdoc(7) formatters.

If the input format of a file is
man(7), the input is copied to the
output, expanding any roff(7)so requests. The parser is also run, and as
usual, the -W level controls which
DIAGNOSTICS are displayed
before copying the input to the output.

The character set used for the markdown output is ASCII. Non-ASCII characters
are encoded as HTML entities. Since that is not possible in literal font
contexts, because these are rendered as code spans and code blocks in the
markdown output, non-ASCII characters are transliterated to ASCII
approximations in these contexts.

Markdown is a very weak markup language, so all semantic markup is lost, and
even part of the presentational markup may be lost. Do not use this as an
intermediate step in converting to HTML; instead, use
-Thtml
directly.

The man(7),
tbl(7), and
eqn(7) input languages are not
supported by -Tmarkdown output mode.

PostScript “Adobe-3.0” Level-2 pages may be generated by
-Tps.
Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
family, 11-point. Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
Line-height is 1.4m.

The mandoc utility exits with one of the
following values, controlled by the message
level associated with the
-W option:

0

No base system convention violations, style suggestions, warnings, or
errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because they were lower
than the requested level.

1

At least one base system convention violation or style suggestion
occurred, but no warning or error, and
-Wbase or
-Wstyle was specified.

2

At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
-Wwarning or a lower
level was requested.

3

At least one parsing error occurred, but no unsupported feature was
encountered, and -Werror or a lower
level was requested.

4

At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
-Wunsupp or a lower
level was requested.

5

Invalid command line arguments were specified. No input files have been
read.

6

An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion of memory, file
descriptors, or process table entries. Such errors cause
mandoc to exit at once, possibly in the
middle of parsing or formatting a file.

Line and column numbers start at 1. Both are omitted for messages referring to
an input file as a whole. Macro names and arguments are omitted where
meaningless. The os operating system
specifier is omitted for messages that are relevant for all operating systems.
Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments or operating system
errors, for example when memory is exhausted, may also omit the
file and
level fields.

Indicates a risk that the information shown or its formatting may mismatch
the author's intent in minor ways. Additionally, syntax errors are
classified at least as warnings, even if they do not usually cause
misformatting.

An input file uses dubious or discouraged style. This is not a complaint
about the syntax, and probably neither formatting nor portability are in
danger. While great care is taken to avoid false positives on the higher
message levels, the style level tries
to reduce the probability that issues go unnoticed, so it may occasionally
issue bogus suggestions. Please use your good judgement to decide whether
any particular style suggestion really
justifies a change to the input file.

A convention used in the base system of a specific operating system is not
adhered to. These are not markup mistakes, and neither the quality of
formatting nor portability are in danger. Messages of the
base level are printed with the more
intuitive stylelevel tag.

Messages of the base,
style,
warning,
error, and
unsupp levels except those about
non-existent or unreadable input files are hidden unless their level, or a
lower level, is requested using a -W option
or -Tlint output mode.

As indicated below, all base and some
style checks are only performed if a
specific operating system name occurs in the arguments of the
-W command line option, of the
Os macro, of the
-Ios command line option, or, if neither
are present, in the return value of the
uname(3) function.

(mdoc, OpenBSD) The
Dd macro does not use CVS
Mdocdate keyword substitution, but
using it is conventionally expected in the OpenBSD
base system.

unknown architecture

(mdoc, OpenBSD, NetBSD)
The third argument of the Dt macro does
not match any of the architectures this operating system is running
on.

operating system explicitly specified

(mdoc, OpenBSD, NetBSD)
The Os macro has an argument. In the
base system, it is conventionally left blank.

RCS id missing

(OpenBSD, NetBSD) The
manual page lacks the comment line with the RCS identifier generated by
CVS OpenBSD or
NetBSD keyword substitution as
conventionally used in these operating systems.

referenced manual not found

(mdoc) An Xr macro references a manual
page that is not found in the base system. The path to look for base
system manuals is configurable at compile time and defaults to
/usr/share/man:
/usr/X11R6/man.

(mdoc, man) The Dd or
TH macro provides an abbreviated month
name or a day number with a leading zero. In the formatted output, the
month name is written out in full and the leading zero is omitted.

lower case character in document title

(mdoc, man) The title is still used as given in the
Dt or
TH macro.

duplicate RCS id

A single manual page contains two copies of the RCS identifier for the
same operating system. Consider deleting the later instance and moving the
first one up to the top of the page.

possible typo in section name

(mdoc) Fuzzy string matching revealed that the argument of an
Sh macro is similar, but not identical
to a standard section name.

unterminated quoted argument

(roff) Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters such
that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted argument
need not be escaped. The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can
be omitted. However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the
code harder to read.

(mdoc) A string was found in plain text or in a
Bx macro that could be represented
using Ox,
Nx,
Fx, or
Dx.

errnos out of order

(mdoc, NetBSD) The
Er items in a
Bl list are not in alphabetical
order.

duplicate errno

(mdoc, NetBSD) A
Bl list contains two consecutive
It entries describing the same
Er number.

trailing delimiter

(mdoc) The last argument of an Ex,
Fo,
Nd,
Nm,
Os,
Sh,
Ss,
St, or
Sx macro ends with a trailing
delimiter. This is usually bad style and often indicates typos. Most
likely, the delimiter can be removed.

no blank before trailing delimiter

(mdoc) The last argument of a macro that supports trailing delimiter
arguments is longer than one byte and ends with a trailing delimiter.
Consider inserting a blank such that the delimiter becomes a separate
argument, thus moving it out of the scope of the macro.

fill mode already enabled, skipping

(man) A fi request occurs even though
the document is still in fill mode, or already switched back to fill mode.
It has no effect.

fill mode already disabled, skipping

(man) An nf request occurs even though
the document already switched to no-fill mode and did not switch back to
fill mode yet. It has no effect.

verbatim "--", maybe consider using
\(em

(mdoc) Even though the ASCII output device renders an em-dash as
“--”, that is not a good way to write it in an input file
because it renders poorly on all other output devices.

function name without markup

(mdoc) A word followed by an empty pair of parentheses occurs on a text
line. Consider using an Fn or
Xr macro.

whitespace at end of input line

(mdoc, man, roff) Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never
semantically significant — but in the odd case where it might be,
it is extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.

bad comment style

(roff) Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote
character. The mandoc utility treats
the line as a comment line even without the backslash, but leaving out the
backslash might not be portable.

(mdoc) A Dt macro has no arguments, or
there is no Dt macro before the first
non-prologue macro.

missing manual title, using ""

(man) There is no TH macro, or it has
no arguments.

missing manual section, using
""

(mdoc, man) A Dt or
TH macro lacks the mandatory section
argument.

unknown manual section

(mdoc) The section number in a Dt line
is invalid, but still used.

missing date, using today's date

(mdoc, man) The document was parsed as
mdoc(7) and it has no
Dd macro, or the
Dd macro has no arguments or only empty
arguments; or the document was parsed as
man(7) and it has no
TH macro, or the
TH macro has less than three arguments
or its third argument is empty.

cannot parse date, using it verbatim

(mdoc, man) The date given in a Dd or
TH macro does not follow the
conventional format.

date in the future, using it anyway

(mdoc, man) The date given in a Dd or
TH macro is more than a day ahead of
the current system
time(3).

missing Os macro, using ""

(mdoc) The default or current system is not shown in this case.

late prologue macro

(mdoc) A Dd or
Os macro occurs after some non-prologue
macro, but still takes effect.

prologue macros out of order

(mdoc) The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
Dd,
Dt,
Os. All three macros are used even when
given in another order.

(mdoc) The NAME section does not contain any
Nm child macro before the first
Nd macro.

NAME section without description

(mdoc) The NAME section lacks the mandatory
Nd child macro.

description not at the end of NAME

(mdoc) The NAME section does contain an
Nd child macro, but other content
follows it.

bad NAME section content

(mdoc) The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
Nm and
Nd.

missing comma before name

(mdoc) The NAME section contains an Nm
macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by a comma.

missing description line, using
""

(mdoc) The Nd macro lacks the required
argument. The title line of the manual will end after the dash.

description line outside NAME section

(mdoc) An Nd macro appears outside the
NAME section. The arguments are printed anyway and the following text is
used for apropos(1), but
none of that behaviour is portable.

sections out of conventional order

(mdoc) A standard section occurs after another section it usually
precedes. All section titles are used as given, and the order of sections
is not changed.

duplicate section title

(mdoc) The same standard section title occurs more than once.

unexpected section

(mdoc) A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual where
it normally isn't useful.

cross reference to self

(mdoc) An Xr macro refers to a name and
section matching the section of the present manual page and a name
mentioned in an Nm macro in the NAME or
SYNOPSIS section, or in an Fn or
Fo macro in the SYNOPSIS. Consider
using Nm or
Fn instead of
Xr.

unusual Xr order

(mdoc) In the SEE ALSO section, an Xr
macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number, or two
Xr macros referring to the same section
are out of alphabetical order.

unusual Xr punctuation

(mdoc) In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
Xr macros differs from a single comma,
or there is trailing punctuation after the last
Xr macro.

AUTHORS section without An macro

(mdoc) An AUTHORS sections contains no
An macros, or only empty ones.
Probably, there are author names lacking markup.

(mdoc) A list item in a Bl list
contains a trailing paragraph macro. The paragraph macro is moved after
the end of the list.

skipping no-space macro

(mdoc) An input line begins with an Ns
macro, or the next argument after an Ns
macro is an isolated closing delimiter. The macro is ignored.

blocks badly nested

(mdoc) If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output format,
and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be outright wrong
because such languages do not support badly nested blocks at all. Typical
examples of badly nested blocks are “Ao
Bo Ac Bc” and “Ao Bq
Ac”. In these examples,
Ac breaks
Bo and
Bq, respectively.

nested displays are not portable

(mdoc) A Bd,
D1, or
Dl display occurs nested inside another
Bd display. This works with
mandoc, but fails with most other
implementations.

moving content out of list

(mdoc) A Bl list block contains text or
macros before the first It macro. The
offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.

first macro on line

Inside a Bl-column list, a
Ta macro occurs as the first macro on a
line, which is not portable.

line scope broken

(man) While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro, another
macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one. The previous,
interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.

(roff, eqn) The macro name is missing from a macro definition request, or
an eqn(7) control statement or
operation keyword lacks its required argument.

conditional request controls empty scope

(roff) A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
follows it on the same logical input line:

The ‘\{’ keyword to open a multi-line scope.

A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line
scope.

The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening
whitespace, resulting in next-line scope.

Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only, and
there is no other content on its logical input line. Note that it doesn't
matter whether the logical input line is split across multiple physical
input lines using ‘\’ line continuation characters. This is
one of the rare cases where trailing whitespace is syntactically
significant. The conditional request controls a scope containing
whitespace only, so it is unlikely to have a significant effect, except
that it may control a following el
clause.

skipping empty macro

(mdoc) The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.

empty block

(mdoc, man) A Bd,
Bk,
Bl,
D1,
Dl,
MT,
RS, or
UR block contains nothing in its body
and will produce no output.

empty argument, using 0n

(mdoc) The required width is missing after
Bd or
Bl-offset or
-width.

missing display type, using -ragged

(mdoc) The Bd macro is invoked without
the required display type.

list type is not the first argument

(mdoc) In a Bl macro, at least one
other argument precedes the type argument. The
mandoc utility copes with any argument
order, but some other mdoc(7)
implementations do not.

missing -width in -tag list, using 8n

(mdoc) Every Bl macro having the
-tag argument requires
-width, too.

missing utility name, using ""

(mdoc) The Ex-std macro is called without an
argument before Nm has first been
called with an argument.

missing function name, using
""

(mdoc) The Fo macro is called without
an argument. No function name is printed.

empty head in list item

(mdoc) In a Bl-diag,
-hang,
-inset,
-ohang, or
-tag list, an
It macro lacks the required argument.
The item head is left empty.

empty list item

(mdoc) In a Bl-bullet,
-dash,
-enum, or
-hyphen list, an
It block is empty. An empty list item
is shown.

missing argument, using next line

(mdoc) An It macro in a
Bd-column list has no arguments. While
mandoc uses the text or macros of the
following line, if any, for the cell, other formatters may misformat the
list.

missing font type, using \fR

(mdoc) A Bf macro has no argument. It
switches to the default font.

unknown font type, using \fR

(mdoc) The Bf argument is invalid. The
default font is used instead.

nothing follows prefix

(mdoc) A Pf macro has no argument, or
only one argument and no macro follows on the same input line. This
defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed before the
text or macros following on the next input line.

empty reference block

(mdoc) An Rs macro is immediately
followed by an Re macro on the next
input line. Such an empty block does not produce any output.

missing section argument

(mdoc) An Xr macro lacks its second,
section number argument. The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed,
but without subsequent parentheses.

missing -std argument, adding it

(mdoc) An Ex or
Rv macro lacks the required
-std argument. The
mandoc utility assumes
-std even when it is not specified, but
other implementations may not.

missing option string, using
""

(man) The OP macro is invoked without
any argument. An empty pair of square brackets is shown.

missing resource identifier, using
""

(man) The MT or
UR macro is invoked without any
argument. An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.

missing eqn box, using ""

(eqn) A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found, but there is nothing
to the left of it. An empty box is inserted.

(mdoc) A Bd or
Bl macro has more than one
-compact, more than one
-offset, or more than one
-width argument. All but the last
instances of these arguments are ignored.

skipping duplicate argument

(mdoc) An An macro has more than one
-split or
-nosplit argument. All but the first of
these arguments are ignored.

skipping duplicate display type

(mdoc) A Bd macro has more than one
type argument; the first one is used.

skipping duplicate list type

(mdoc) A Bl macro has more than one
type argument; the first one is used.

skipping -width argument

(mdoc) A Bl-column,
-diag,
-ohang,
-inset, or
-item list has a
-width argument. That has no
effect.

wrong number of cells

In a line of a Bl-column list, the number of tabs or
Ta macros is less than the number
expected from the list header line or exceeds the expected number by more
than one. Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number
of columns are joined into one single cell.

unknown AT&T UNIX version

(mdoc) An At macro has an invalid
argument. It is used verbatim, with “AT&T UNIX ”
prefixed to it.

comma in function argument

(mdoc) An argument of an Fa or
Fn macro contains a comma; it should
probably be split into two arguments.

parenthesis in function name

(mdoc) The first argument of an Fc or
Fn macro contains an opening or closing
parenthesis; that's probably wrong, parentheses are added
automatically.

unknown library name

(mdoc, not on OpenBSD) An
Lb macro has an unknown name argument
and will be rendered as “library
“name””.

invalid content in Rs block

(mdoc) An Rs block contains plain text
or non-% macros. The bogus content is left in the syntax tree. Formatting
may be poor.

invalid Boolean argument

(mdoc) An Sm macro has an argument
other than on or
off. The invalid argument is moved out
of the macro, which leaves the macro empty, causing it to toggle the
spacing mode.

argument contains two font escapes

(roff) The second argument of a char
request contains more than one font escape sequence. A wrong font may
remain active after using the character.

unknown font, skipping request

(man, tbl) A roff(7)ft request or a
tbl(7)f layout modifier has an unknown
font argument.

odd number of characters in request

(roff) A tr request contains an odd
number of characters. The last character is mapped to the blank
character.

(mdoc) The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill
mode: In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
significant. However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill
mode are replaced with sp
requests.

tab in filled text

(mdoc, man) The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill
mode: In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant on text
input lines. As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text
lines are passed through to the formatters in any case. Given that the
text before the tab character will be filled, it is hard to predict which
tab stop position the tab will advance to.

new sentence, new line

(mdoc) A new sentence starts in the middle of a text line. Start it on a
new input line to help formatters produce correct spacing.

invalid escape sequence

(roff) An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks
the closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters. If
the argument is incomplete, \* and
\n expand to an empty string,
\B to the digit ‘0’, and
\w to the length of the incomplete
argument. All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.

undefined string, using ""

(roff) If a string is used without being defined before, its value is
implicitly set to the empty string. However, defining strings explicitly
before use keeps the code more readable.

(tbl) The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected. The
character is ignored.

skipping unknown tbl option

(tbl) The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
match any known option name. The word is ignored.

missing tbl option argument

(tbl) A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately followed by
a closing parenthesis. The option is ignored.

wrong tbl option argument size

(tbl) A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
Both the option and the argument are ignored.

empty tbl layout

(tbl) A table layout specification is completely empty, specifying zero
lines and zero columns. As a fallback, a single left-justified column is
used.

invalid character in tbl layout

(tbl) A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier, or a
modifier precedes the first key. The invalid character is discarded.

unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout

(tbl) A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis, but no
matching closing parenthesis. The rest of the input line, starting from
the parenthesis, has no effect.

tbl without any data cells

(tbl) A table does not contain any data cells. It will probably produce no
output.

ignoring data in spanned tbl cell

(tbl) A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
(‘s’) or vertical span
(‘^’) in the table
layout, but it contains data. The data is ignored.

ignoring extra tbl data cells

(tbl) A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
The data in the extra cells is ignored.

data block open at end of tbl

(tbl) A data block is opened with T{,
but never closed with a matching T}.
The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell, and any
remaining cells stay empty.

(mdoc) One of the prologue macros occurs more than once. The last instance
overrides all previous ones.

skipping late title macro

(mdoc) The Dt macro appears after the
first non-prologue macro. Traditional formatters cannot handle this
because they write the page header before parsing the document body. Even
though this technical restriction does not apply to
mandoc, traditional semantics is
preserved. The late macro is discarded including its arguments.

input stack limit exceeded, infinite
loop?

(roff) Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following
features, in order to prevent infinite loops:

expansion of nested escape sequences including expansion of strings
and number registers,

expansion of nested user-defined macros,

and so file inclusion.

When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing some content,
but the parser can continue.

skipping bad character

(mdoc, man, roff) The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
ascii(7) character. The
message mentions the character number. The offending byte is replaced with
a question mark (‘?’). Consider editing the input file to
replace the byte with an ASCII transliteration of the intended
character.

skipping unknown macro

(mdoc, man, roff) The first identifier on a request or macro line is
neither recognized as a
roff(7) request, nor as a
user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
mdoc(7) or
man(7) macro. It may be
mistyped or unsupported. The request or macro is discarded including its
arguments.

skipping request outside macro

(roff) A shift or
return request occurs outside any macro
definition and has no effect.

skipping insecure request

(roff) An input file attempted to run a shell command or to read or write
an external file. Such attempts are denied for security reasons.

skipping item outside list

(mdoc, eqn) An It macro occurs outside
any Bl list, or an
eqn(7)above delimiter occurs outside any
pile. It is discarded including its arguments.

skipping column outside column list

(mdoc) A Ta macro occurs outside any
Bl-column block. It is discarded
including its arguments.

skipping end of block that is not open

(mdoc, man, eqn, tbl, roff) Various syntax elements can only be used to
explicitly close blocks that have previously been opened. An
mdoc(7) block closing macro, a
man(7)ME,
RE or
UE macro, an
eqn(7) right delimiter or
closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
roff(7) conditional request is
encountered but no matching block is open. The offending request or macro
is discarded.

fewer RS blocks open, skipping

(man) The RE macro is invoked with an
argument, but less than the specified number of
RS blocks is open. The
RE macro is discarded.

inserting missing end of block

(mdoc, tbl) Various mdoc(7)
macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros. A
block that doesn't support bad nesting ends before all of its children are
properly closed. The open child nodes are closed implicitly.

appending missing end of block

(mdoc, man, eqn, tbl, roff) At the end of the document, an explicit
mdoc(7) block, a
man(7) next-line scope or
MT,
RS or
UR block, an equation, table, or
roff(7) conditional or ignore
block is still open. The open block is closed implicitly.

escaped character not allowed in a name

(roff) Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
non-whitespace ASCII characters. Escape sequences and characters and
strings expressed in terms of them cannot form part of a name. The first
argument of an am,
as,
de,
ds,
nr, or
rr request, or any argument of an
rm request, or the name of a request or
user defined macro being called, is terminated by an escape sequence. In
the cases of as,
ds, and
nr, the request has no effect at all.
In the cases of am,
de,
rr, and
rm, what was parsed up to this point is
used as the arguments to the request, and the rest of the input line is
discarded including the escape sequence. When parsing for a request or a
user-defined macro name to be called, only the escape sequence is
discarded. The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro
name, the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request
or macro.

using macro argument outside macro

(roff) The escape sequence \$ occurs outside any macro definition and
expands to the empty string.

argument number is not numeric

(roff) The argument of the escape sequence \$ is not a digit; the escape
sequence expands to the empty string.

NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file

(mdoc) For security reasons, the Bd
macro does not support the -file
argument. By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious
document might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently
displaying the file on the screen, revealing the file content to
bystanders. The argument is ignored including the file name following
it.

skipping display without arguments

(mdoc) A Bd block macro does not have
any arguments. The block is discarded, and the block content is displayed
in whatever mode was active before the block.

missing list type, using -item

(mdoc) A Bl macro fails to specify the
list type.

argument is not numeric, using 1

(roff) The argument of a ce request is
not a number.

argument is not a character

(roff) The first argument of a char
request is neither a single ASCII character nor a single character escape
sequence. The request is ignored including all its arguments.

missing manual name, using ""

(mdoc) The first call to Nm, or any
call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument.

uname(3) system call failed, using
UNKNOWN

(mdoc) The Os macro is called without
arguments, and the uname(3)
system call failed. As a workaround,
mandoc can be compiled with
-DOSNAME="\"string\"".

unknown standard specifier

(mdoc) An St macro has an unknown
argument and is discarded.

skipping request without numeric
argument

(roff, eqn) An it request or an
eqn(7)size or
gsize statement has a non-numeric or
negative argument or no argument at all. The invalid request or statement
is ignored.

excessive shift

(roff) The argument of a shift request
is larger than the number of arguments of the macro that is currently
being executed. All macro arguments are deleted and \n(.$ is set to
zero.

NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or
".."

(roff) For security reasons, mandoc
allows so file inclusion requests only
with relative paths and only without ascending to any parent directory. By
requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document might
otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying the file
on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
mandoc only shows the path as it
appears behind so.

.so request failed

(roff) Servicing a so request requires
reading an external file, but the file could not be opened.
mandoc only shows the path as it
appears behind so.

skipping all arguments

(mdoc, man, eqn, roff) An
mdoc(7)Bt,
Ed,
Ef,
Ek,
El,
Lp,
Pp,
Re,
Rs, or
Ud macro, an
It macro in a list that don't support
item heads, a man(7)LP,
P, or
PP macro, an
eqn(7)EQ or
EN macro, or a
roff(7)br,
fi, or
nf request or ‘..’ block
closing request is invoked with at least one argument. All arguments are
ignored.

skipping excess arguments

(mdoc, man, roff) A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:

(mdoc, man) Currently, mandoc cannot
handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit of 2^31 bytes (2
Gigabytes). Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem
in practice. Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.

unsupported control character

(roff) An ASCII control character supported by other
roff(7) implementations but
not by mandoc was found in an input
file. It is replaced by a question mark.

unsupported roff request

(roff) An input file contains a
roff(7) request supported by
GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
mandoc, and it is likely that this will
cause information loss or considerable misformatting.

eqn delim option in tbl

(eqn, tbl) The options line of a table defines equation delimiters. Any
equation source code contained in the table will be printed
unformatted.

unsupported table layout modifier

(tbl) A table layout specification contains an
‘m’ modifier. The
modifier is discarded.

ignoring macro in table

(tbl, mdoc, man) A table contains an invocation of an
mdoc(7) or
man(7) macro or of an undefined
macro. The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled as if they were
a text line.